atahualpa domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home3/aboarddi/public_html/blog/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114
|
||||
|
I booked the airport pick up mentioned in our last blog. That will get us to the yard with fresh provisions. We’ve decided that regardless of the state of the boat, we’ll find some way to sleep aboard. After a day or two on the hard we’ll probably need to hire a car but we can wait until it’s necessary. I figured it would be good to have some project work to get on with once we’ve caught up with our sleep. The main project will be rebuilding my nav console so I needed to get hold of a new wood panel before we go. I grabbed Dan from Division II for some ideas on where to get a new panel and he pointed out that a kitchen outfitter should be able to make the custom piece. Whangarei has it all and soon I had my measurements in with a fitter who could cut the right sized piece of wood and cover it with laminate. By the afternoon I had my piece of wood. Sorted. In the afternoon I walked to the other side of the river to the new All Marine (formerly Burnsco) to pick up a new igniter for our grill – that had arrived. On the way I noticed a theraputic massage place. I’ve been having a lot of problems with my neck recently and I thought I’d give it a go. Half an hour of pulling, pushing and twisting and I feel a bit better. Just hoping I’ll survive the forthcoming flights. While I was out and about Helen continued with some more boat cleaning. The freezer is now empty and off. I worry a little about how quickly we’ll dirty up once in the yard but it’s good to start from a point of cleanliness. Today we haul out. High tide is around 1pm so we expect to leave the dock around midday and be settled before the evening. We pick up our hire car tomorrow and have the full day in the yard. I’ll be pulling all the drive batteries out and most of the house bank in preparation for the work in February. On Saturday we’ll head south to visit our recent crew mate Lissa and her family and hopefully, over the weekend, visit the west coast. On Monday we’ll meet up with Tracey and Lew (met on the Otaga rail trail) who live near Mount Eden. We’ll leave them early Tuesday morning for our flight to South Africa. Busy times ahead – at least compared to our usual pace. 9am Monday morning we were up and ready for our walk to Whangarei Falls along with Cheryl and Jeff from Subzero. The walk along the river turned out to be quite pleasant and all the better for the company. The map, again, was a little wrong in places but we found our way to the falls well under two hours. We ate lunch there before taking the path to the top of the falls and then coming back down for the return trip. On the way back we passed through the AH Reed Kauri Park where they’d build quite a high boardwalk through the trees. All very pleasant. I dropped by Northland Inflatables to finish off fixing their email. This entailed fixing the root cause which really meant educating the users. That’s all sorted now. Looks like they may have sorted out my dinghy rollock for my efforts. It’s on it’s way. Yesterday evening we went to the movies to watch Contagion which was pretty ok although I got upset when one of the main characters (Jude Law) explained some “elementary maths” which where he gave an example of doubling only he ended up squaring his terms. Made me shudder. What can one really expect from screen writers? Been a bit late blogging today as I’ve been sucked into more internet ordering. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right part but now successfully ordered are :
I’ve also spent ages looking at options to get from Auckland airport to Whangarei on our return. All the car hire companies want to charge $220 to $250 to return the vehicle to the airport (it’s much cheaper the other way around). The busses look cheap but they need to be booked and there’s no guarantee on flight arrival time and lugging ourselves on the busses after flying for a day and switching our clocks 12 hours won’t be fun. Taxi firms seem to want $500 for the trip but I’ve just found a local chap who will do the trip for $200. Looks, by far, the best option.
It took another two hours of work but in the morning I managed to sort out the email set up messed up the day before. I feel relieved. Only thing left is a bit of education as the root cause boiled down to large numbers of huge attachments resulting from scanned documents being sent out. I need to talk to his wife and work out a better way to do what she’s been doing which I can do this afternoon. In the afternoon Helen and I decided to walk to Abbey Caves, about three to four miles out of town. It was a very pleasant walk through rural countryside and a bit of a climb giving us good exercise. About a mile from the caves we were passing a home and just arriving was Neil, who we’d last met when he was a guest aboard Endless and joined us on the river trip at Likuri Island. What a pleasant surprise. We were soon chatting and it didn’t take long before we were invited in on our return from the caves. We eventually found the caves area further along the road though much further than our map suggested. Unfortunately there was no information whatsoever available, not even a map of the area to give us an idea of what to expect or find. We followed the path in and found ‘Organ Cave’ into which we descended and waded along an underground stream to where there was no light whatsoever except for our torches and that of the glow worms when we turned the light off. We explored the area a little further finding an interesting rocky zone called the Rock Garden. Little did we know, we’d completely missed two other caves but at least we’d seen the biggest one. Heading back we stopped by Neil’s home and met his wife, two kids, dog and cat. We sufficient arm twisting we reluctantly agreed to a few beers too while we chatted about our experiences in Fiji and other things. Neil then took us over half the way back showing us a great view of the town. He would have taken us all the way in but we insisted we were out for the exercise. From there we walked back to town and ate out at a Thai restaurant in the town center. While Helen packed for our flights out of New Zealand I decided to head off in the dinghy to source a couple of parts. First stop was the dinghy store where I hoped to find a replacement part for one of our rollocks into which the oars sit. While there I learned the owner had email problems and soon I was sucked in. The problem turned out to be oversized email files but by the time I’d resolved that I’d managed to induce a new problem which needed access to the install disk. I could go no further so I now feel obliged to finish the job off today. Fortunately I have install disks for just about every version of Office so it should resolve ok today. While in the middle of all this I popped round the corner to order a new igniter for our grill as the old one has corroded away and we have to light it with a flame. In the afternoon Helen headed off to pick up another suitcase while I took a look at car radios in a couple of local stores – really just to gain inspiration. I am still drawn to the Pioneers although my preference has shifted towards the AVH-P3300BT which will absolutely require a rebuild of my nav station. I like the idea of being able to burn a DVDs worth of MP3s and play them randomly. |
||||
|
Copyright © 2024 Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||||